Bionics | Living Archives on Eugenics Blog

This What sorts question many thought they had figured out is increasingly up for grasp again in all kind of areas. Athletes are one of them. Who is an Olympic athlete? Who is a Paralympic athlete? Who is….? As a contribution to this discourse I wrote the article below. It is an open access journal, so feel free to download the paper and of course any comment are welcome here or to me directly.

in SCRIPT-ed – A Journal of Law, Technology & Society

Oscar Pistorius and the Future Nature of Olympic, Paralympic and Other Sports
Gregor Wolbring, pp.139-160
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Oscar Pistorius is a Paralympic bionic leg runner and record holder in the 100, 200, and 400 meters who wants to compete in the Olympics. This paper provides an analysis of a) his case; b) the impact of his case on the Olympics, the Paralympics and other –lympics and the relationships between the –lympics; c) the impact on other international and national sports; d) the applicability of the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. It situates the evaluation of the Pistorius case within the broader doping discourse and the reality that new and emerging science and technology products increasingly generate internal and external human bodily enhancements that go beyond the species-typical, enabling more and more a culture of increasing demand for, and acceptance of modifications of the human body (structure, function, abilities) beyond its species-typical boundaries and the emergence of new social concepts such as transhumanism and the transhumanisation of ableism.

http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/issue5-1.asp